Eighty is a good age at which to “examine one’s conscience” on how one’s mission has gone until then , even if it involves taking a look at future challenges: this is the spirit in which Vatican Radio, the Pope’s radio broadcaster celebrates its “birthday”, its director, Fr. Federico Lombardi, explained yesterday.
An occasion to look over the path taken until today, with the publication of two volumes on the story of the Pontifical radio broadcaster, and at the same time, to weigh up what lies ahead, starting with the internet revolution which radically changes the “profession” of a radio broadcaster that still wants to keep “its identity of serving the universal Church.”
Because, according to Fr. Lombardi, “the leap into the future can only be made if there is a solid base,” that is, if one has knowledge of their past.
The director of Vatican Radio took part in yesterday’s presentation of the two volume work “Eighty years of Vatican Radio” (Libreria Editrice Vaticano publications), by Fernando Bea and Alessandro De Carolis.
Father Lombardi has lived through the Radio’s crucial phases, not just historical moments marked by Pope Pius XII’s radio messages on the eve of the Second World War, for example, and the Second Vatican Council; but also the new phases that came with technological innovation.
“Now, with the internet, he said, communication is facing yet another change, it can become interactive, so we feel that our way of experiencing communication requires innovative technologies that we are learning to use and becoming familiar with. However, he continued, we still need to maintain our identity in the midst of an influx of content on the Web.”
In his introduction to the book, the director of Vatican Radio writes that the aim of the two volumes “is not to give a commentary on the past seven pontificates, but to remind readers of Vatican Radio’s mission: a continuous interweaving of efforts towards an evangelisation and a search for the most efficient distribution tools; between the Word of the Gospel and the technical intelligence to spread it efficiently across the world.”
“Today, Fr. Lombardi concluded, Vatican Radio is a community of communicators in service to the universal Church which searches for new forms of language that can fulfil this mission. It is not just a radio broadcaster but is present on the web as well.”
“Eighty Years of Vatican Radio” is an editorial project that was conceived thanks to the contribution of the Italian State Railway and completes a cycle of initiatives linked to Vatican Radio’s birthday.
The opening celebrations coincided with the inauguration, on 12 February 2011, of an exhibition space in the Vatican Gardens, in the Marconi building where the Nobel Prize winner began his first radio transmissions, by initiative of Pius XI, in 1931.
The second event involved the celebration of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU)’s Seventeenth Radio Assembly, in the Vatican. European public service broadcasters met for the occasion in Rome, having been received by Benedict XVI in an audience at Castel Gandolfo on 30 April.
According to the Italian State Railway’s CEO, Mauro Moretti, the rail group’s support during the celebrations was not a coincidence: in his attempt to build a new modern State having signed the Lateran Treaty in 1929, Pope Ratti decided to give two new key infrastructures to the newly created Vatican City: a radio broadcaster and a railway station.
Moretti proudly recalled that it would be from this very railway station that Pope Ratzinger would take the train to Assisi, to attend the meeting for international prayer for peace on 27 October.